I received an e-mail about the MAC OS upgrade to High Sierra, and wanted to know if you or anyone anyone among the PFRE readers has tried it. When I upgraded to Sierra, I experienced much longer processing time in Lightroom. I was wondering if anyone has experience with this before I upgrade.

Yes, I have been using Mac OS Sierra since it was released and haven’t noticed any serious issues. However, people’s experiences will vary depending on the hardware they are running it on.

My attitude on implementing new operating systems is that I implement all updates and new versions ASAP. Because they routinely contain security updates and improvements. I do it first on a backup machine to protect myself from serious issues. I think the security considerations far outweigh any other consideration. Apple has a very good history with software updates. That is why most users don’t wait around to install them.

For example, the most recent Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.1 fixed the following problem:

The current version of Mac OS High Sierra is Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.1, released to the public on October 31. The update includes a fix for a serious vulnerability in the WPA2 Wi-Fi standard that protects many modern Wi-Fi networks. Using a key reinstallation attack or “KRACK,” attackers could use a now-fixed exploit in the WPA2 protocol to decrypt network traffic to sniff out sensitive information like passwords.

To me, this kind of issue outweighs any minor slow down issue with Lightroom.

I installed it on an external thumb drive for my Mac. I did not want to replace my existing El Capitan which is working perfectly with all my software until I could make sure my existing software (mainly the older software that I don’t use very much but needed it from time to time but not enough to warrant signing up for a monthly lease fee). I found that my earlier Adobe CS software was not supported and did not work correctly. For me is it is Indesign CS 4 and Dreamweaver CS4. I rely on both. So I left High Sierra in place on a bootable thumb drive to run the computer in the event of needing to work on the internal HD with running the computer from the external but I would not replace my El Capitan since it works well. Until my newer software no longer works. But I make sure I use McAfee for computer security although I am not sure just how much I can rely on that either. Never stops.

So far so good. I updated a couple days ago and haven’t seen many issues. I was more concerned about the LR / PS updates than High Sierra though. I think a number of changes were made to the organic photo library in High Sierra which I don’t use anyway. A couple changes in “Notes” were made but probably won’t use much of that either.

I have updated to High Sierra and have found no improvement or degredation in speed with regard to Lightroom even though the Lightroom update to Classic was supposed to improve the speed. What I have found is that since Adobe updated to Lightroom Classic, importing images from an SD card will randomly cause Lightroom to crash. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve submitted a number of crash reports on this issue. But then, that is not what you are asking about. Basically, the answer is no change in speed with regards to the update in the operating system.